


Five Things Ayel Remembers about Rura Penthe

by celebros



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebros/pseuds/celebros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Nero is the one to pull Ayel from the depths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Ayel Remembers about Rura Penthe

I.

Sometimes Nero is the one to pull Ayel from the depths. They clasp arms at the top, Nero's eyes closing briefly and Ayel breathing harshly from the two-hundred-meter climb, dragging in air. It still tastes like metal, above, but it isn't black or hot or stale.

It happens rarely – maybe once per year – but every day that Ayel begins the ascent, he imagines his captain on the other end of the harness rope. He imagines the bruise-dark eyelids flickering shut, the infintesimal moment of rapture on Nero's face as they hold each other's forearms, and he thinks: _Yes._ It is only during these imaginings that he ever thinks _Yes_ , those twenty-five years.

Except –

II.

The others from the Narada don't believe him anymore. He can see in their faces that Nero has become as much a legend to them as to anyone else on the colony. He wonders, sometimes, why he is the only one Nero ever pulls from the mines – wonders if he's imagining it, now and then, if it's all a dream, Romulus brushed away by hands of fire, the tear in space, their ship left mournful and dark over the planet, and his silent captain dragging him once a year from the dark. It's all too evil and too perfect to be true.

For several years, the men pretend to believe. After all, they follow him because it was Nero's parting command – _Ayel will be my voice_ – and if that doesn't matter then to whom would they turn? They pretend in the facade of memory, pretend so they can hold on to him.

In the seventeenth year Deya finally rattles a half-dead-breath of a question to him – “ _Do you really still believe, Commander Ayel?_ ” That he's real, alive, here, has a plan, cares for us, will come back? And Ayel adds silently, that he loves you?

And he thinks _yes_ then, too.

III.

The twentieth year, several of the men try to escape. The Klingons execute them brutally and then come to Ayel, the heir apparent, and fuck him so hard and dry that he's bleeding in seconds and it doesn't stop. They fuck him everywhere and forever until he isn't there anymore, until he stops having a body. They speak to him in Klingon and he can't translate. They drag their fingers across his chest and ears and laugh as the blood rises.

He doesn't know how or really if it happened, but that night in the solitary block, his door slides open and Nero's unmistakable body presses against his back. Ayel is naked, and doesn't turn. Nero is warm and silent, his arm around Ayel's hip, his bare chest on Ayel's shoulderblades, his cock blessedly limp through the too-soft fabric of his pants. He is there, perhaps, for an hour. His blunt fingers brush the contoured bruises on Ayel's body, not pitying but contemplative and almost proud. Then he stands and it gone.

Ayel doesn't think anything for days.

IV.

Mandana comes to Ayel in his sleep. She has been dead twenty-four years, and he had forgotten that it hurt, which she seems to know. She takes off her dark webby dress and makes love to him heavy and messy, as dead women might. She doesn't seem to earn any pleasure from the act, even as he folds his fingers against her sex the way Nero had used to, but she presses him into her again and again, holding him deep until he comes unwillingly, almost resentfully.

He shudders in the after, cold in her arms, and she bites his shoulder very, very gently.

“Oren, love,” she says softly, “you know he's going to be right, in the end.”

He flushes. He wants to push her away in disgust, to tell her she's said the wrong name again in a way that will twist her stomach, even if he knows she won't apologize, but when he turns to look at her face her eyes are glassy, her expression tense and distant.

“Isn't he always?” he asks, and he can't keep the bitterness from his voice. She doesn't seem to notice, breathing lightly. She withdraws one of her hands from him and lets it flutter to her stomach. Because it is a dream, Ayel knows that this means she is pregnant, even though it doesn't show in her pale naked belly. The hand cradled there, she closes her eyes and presses her face into his neck, puffing out breath through her nose.

“No,” she says, and she's been so long silent that it takes him a moment to remember what he had asked. “He's wrong about so much. He thinks he's our toy. Thinks he's dispensable. Thinks he'll lose us when our daughter comes. Thinks you're using him. Oren, he thinks a lot of stupid things, and he doesn't always know which way the sky is, but in the end it's going to be him who's right, and you'll be wrong. And neither of you will know what to do.”

“Then tell me,” he breathes, squeezing his eyes shut. “Mandana –” He falters. If he calls her by Nero's name for her, will she tell him? If he doesn't, will she know he's the wrong man? He must, so he does: “Mandana, h'levreinnye, you've woven these things from fantasy to truth and back before.” His throat closes. He is aware again, suddenly, that he is dreaming, that he is asleep on a cold floor in a Klingon prison colony and that this woman has been dead for twenty-four years and can't possibly tell him anything, but he pulls air into his lungs past the icy barrier that grief and fear have erected and whispers, “Tell me.”

She licks her lips and presses them against his, not puckered into a kiss but flat and smooth and cold. He closes his eyes, feels her fingers come up and fold firmly across his cheeks, forking around his ears. She is holding him still and against her, and for once he feels no attraction to her, no aching pull in his stomach, because she is an agent of something foreign and horrible – his future, he thinks, although who can say for sure? Although he knows he is about to wake up and this is his last chance to see her, he cannot open his eyes again.

“There is no right thing,” she says, lips moving as if they aren't pressed to his mouth. “Not in this future, Ayel.” And before he can exhale his relief and sadness and twenty-four weary years onto her, a cell door slams and he is jolting awake so hard it hurts.

V.

After twenty-five years of notorious silence, the first word from Nero's mouth is his name.

Somehow, he always knew it would be.


End file.
